Home From The Sea (2 page)

“Is that a fact, now?” Bailey seemed surprised. “Well, by God, I never knew that. I were at sea,
meself
, when the old lady passed away, an’ only learned of it when I got me boots back on dry land an’ came by for a pint. On ’er deathbed, you say?”

“That’s how Charlie told it.” Jim’s hands could polish tankards all by
themselves,
they had been doing it so long. He was intent on the memories of Chegwidden – weatherworn and probably not nearly as old as he had seemed, sitting at the window on the seaward side of the hearth, gazing out, watching for something or someone who never arrived.

When he sold The Raven to Arthur Fairley, he had only one request, and it was not so strange. He was too sick and too tired to manage the tavern, but he would sell it for a low price, if the new owner would give him a clean bed and three squares a day, for as long as he still drew breath, and then see him decently buried at the end.

In fact, Jim’s father knew nothing at all about running a tavern, and Charlie was invaluable in those two short weeks. He would not let the new owner be cheated on the price of ale and rum, and he convinced Mrs. Clitheroe to stay on and cook.

The churchyard in Budleigh was a busy place, Jim thought darkly. Old Nell Chegwidden was there, with Charlie right beside her; and Arthur Fairley lay on the low hillside under the big chestnut tree, where an empty space was reserved for his son.

And may it stay empty, Jim prayed fervently, for many years to come! He had even less desire to join his father than he had to linger in The Raven for the rest of his days, waiting for the big, handsome seamen to tromp up the path, buy a jar of rum, exchange knowing glances and winks with the proprietor, and follow him upstairs for an hour of –

“And another thing,” Fred Bailey burped. “You need to get yourself
a lass
, afore it’s too late. You know what folks in these parts
sez
about you.”

“What do they say? That I’m a eunuch?” Jim guessed.

“Well,
mebbe
somethin’ like that,” Bailey muttered.

“And
mebbe
they’d be something like right.” With a soft curse, Jim slapped his leg.
“A lass, interested in the likes of me?
It’s already too late, Fred. It was too late for me when I was fifteen years old. Don’t believe me?
Go’n
talk
to Molly Hutchins. She’d be glad to tell you how much use I am in the dark.”

The experience still stung. Four years ago, Molly had cornered him – a fresh, pretty girl of seventeen, looking for a likely husband. The scene ended in tears of disappointment and even a gentle kind of pity, when Molly convinced herself Jim was incapable due to old, old injuries. She mourned her own loss and his imagined plight for at least two days before she set her sights on a locksmith from Exmouth, and Jim was off the hook – chagrined, relieved, embarrassed, but at liberty.

The mournful look on Bailey’s seamed, walnut-brown face almost made him regret telling the lie, but honesty might have been much worse. True enough, Bailey was an old seaman, but he had never looked at Jim and
known
. Not like the big Dutchman with the herring breath, whose hands were everywhere and who did not want to take no for an answer until Jim bit him hard enough to draw blood, and told him to bugger off, and not come back unless he had eaten nothing but rose petals, drunk nothing but spring water, for three days.

“Well, it’s dead sorry I am about that, lad,” Bailey said with all due sympathy. “So, you, uh, you ’ad a lass afore
bein
’ fifteen?”

“No,” Jim said darkly. There had been a few lads, he thought with acid
humor
, but no lasses. Not then, and not later. Of this he kept silent.

Bailey’s eyes widened. “Then you’re …”

“A virgin?”
Jim choked back a ribald snort. In fact, in a way it was perfectly true.

“Um … aye.”
Bailey fidgeted in exquisite discomfort of his own making. “An’ I’m right sorry about that, an’ all. But it
don’t
change the other.”

“What other?” Jim was still thinking about the Dutchman, wondering what the odds were that he might be hunting for roses in April.

“You need to
git
. Out,” Bailey told him. “An’ aye, I know you buried your da a long time ago, an’ I
know
this place is ’is legacy … but yon door’s
goin
’ to start lookin’ like a coffin lid if you don’t get out an’ feel the wind in your face, afore your bones start to rust up like mine.” He shoved himself away from the bar and took a few unsteady steps toward that very door.
“Gotta piss.
Be back.”

“Rabbit pie, and apples,” Jim promised with a faint, indulgent smile as he watched Bailey make his way out and around in the direction of the stable and coach house, which were ten yards east of the tavern. The building stood a scant dozen yards above the beach, so close, gulls often clustered around the door to sun themselves and when the wind blew hard out of the south, the floor could be sandy.
 

Today the south wind whipped inside as Bailey opened the door, and it smelt of the sea, cool and clean on Jim’s face. He breathed it in,
savored
it, and relished the idea that the same wind blew over the Canary Islands, the Azores, the Leeward Islands, Jamaica,
Barbados
.

The names were alchemy, sorcery, and Jim knew how right Fred Bailey was. He was 26, and for more than six of those years he had stood at this bar, polishing tankards, pouring ale and rum, counting coins, watching out for customs men from the Exeter and listening for
rumors
of smugglers on the coast who might be carrying brandy and treats from France –

Watching out for fine-looking seamen who enjoyed a good one … a good
long
one, with a jar of ale first and a sound sleep after, and not a word said to a soul.

This was what Jim needed most, he hold himself as he stacked the tankards in preparation for the evening trade. Mrs. Clitheroe was frying onions now, and Jim’s belly growled. A voyage into exotic waters might have been grand; a roll in bed with a handsome lad would have been just as welcome, but first he needed to get to work. The firewood was unlikely to haul itself inside and he must make up the hearth, fill the water jugs and then batten down the shutters before the wind rose any further.

With a soft curse he came around the bar, strong on his right leg, weak on the left, which gave him a limp which had dogged him since he was not much more than a child. But he was lucky to be alive, and quite intelligent enough to know it. His gloves were stuffed into the pockets of the coat that hung with his hat on the peg by the window. He fetched them out, pulled them on and opened the door to the teasing, tormenting sea wind.

Chapter Two

The storm went through before dawn, leaving torn thatch, broken windows, a few trees down and a lot of seaweed dumped on the beach. The mountains of wrack would be stinking in a few days, if local farmers did not gather it up and dig it into the potato fields. Along with cow and horse dung it grew fine vegetables, and since learning how potatoes were grown, Jim had always found it easier to eat them when he knew they were raised on seaweed.

The Raven suffered no more damage than a shutter that came loose in the wind, and he was hammering up fresh timber, with a mouth still full of nails, when he heard footsteps behind him. They were coming up the path which stretched back to Plymouth in the west and wound on, following the line of the shore, till it reached Portsmouth in the east.

The footsteps stopped behind him and he said, muffled around the nails, “Just wait there, friend, I’ll be done in a minute.”

“Take your time, I’m in no hurry.”

The voice was tenor and soft, the accent rich with the sounds of far off places. Jim felt a shiver race the length of his spine and hesitated in the act of striking the last half dozen nails. He twisted his head to look over his shoulder, but he was squinting directly into the morning sun and caught only an impression of a tall, rangy figure in a dark coat, a man with long hair, a hump on his shoulder and some kind of beast at his left side.

With an impatient grunt, he finished with the nails and threw down the hammer. “Done, thank God,” he muttered as the stranger came on around to the door, beside which the shutter had broken lose near the end of the storm. The light was in his face now, and Jim found himself looking up a hand’s span into wide, clear eyes, some shade between blue and violet and silver. They were framed by long hair the
color
of a hayfield in August, just before the last cut of the season was made; and the hump on the man’s back turned into the round shape of the belly of the mandolin he carried on a strap across his chest. He was thirty at least, perhaps a few years more, if Jim was any judge – not so very much older than Jim himself – and when he smiled, he showed a full set of nice, white teeth.

The beast at his left side was a black spaniel
who
looked up at Jim as if she expected something of him. Jim dusted off his hands and offered the right to the stranger. “Now, you’re not from these parts. I’ve never seen you on this path, and I’ve been here years.
You
… I’d remember.”

“Would you?” The man’s shake was firm, dry. “And you’re right, it has to be ten years since I was here, and you weren’t at The Raven when I slept here for a night or three. I’m Toby Trelane.” His eyes were almost mauve as he looked down at Jim across the little difference in their height.

And for just a moment Jim was so sure he saw the flicker of recognition, he caught his breath. Like usually knew like. Not always, but almost, and often enough for Jim’s heart to skip in his chest and then race. He cleared his throat and held onto Toby Trelane’s hand several seconds too long.

“Jim Fairley. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me where to find the owner,” Toby began.

Jim tapped his chest with one thumb. “You’re looking at him.”

“No, it’s Charlie Chegwidden I need to see.” Then Toby checked as he saw some shadow pass across Jim’s face. “What?”

“The most you’re going to see of Charlie is a headstone,” Jim told him with a nod in the direction of the churchyard. “They planted him not much under six years ago. Goddamnit, did he owe you money?”

“Money?”
Toby backed off a pace. His shoulders seemed to slump for a moment before he unslung the mandolin and leaned against the wall under the thatched eaves.
“Not exactly.
Not money, anyway, but … well, damn. I’m not just too
late,
I’m too late by years.”

And it was dire news, Jim saw. “He did owe you money, didn’t he?” he guessed.
“Or something as good as.
You came here depending on what he had to give you?”

The remarkable eyes narrowed in the morning sun, and Toby breathed a long sigh. “Let’s just say, life would have been a bloody sight easier if old
Charlie’d
been sitting on the bench there, smoking that poisonous pipe of his, like he always swore he’d be when we … when I got back here.”

“You took too long,” Jim said thoughtfully. “Going by the stories he told, he arrived here about eight years ago, just in time to watch them bury his mother, and he ran The Raven till my father bought it from him.”

Toby’s brows rose, creasing his forehead. “He sold the tavern? You mean he – he sold it and walked away?” He seemed astonished, even appalled.

“Sold it,” Jim affirmed, “but he didn’t walk. He stayed right here till the day he died, which was about two weeks after me and my father took over.” He frowned up at Toby. “You want to walk over to the churchyard? They buried him properly, with his name on a stone, and the parson said all the right words. Damn, he wasn’t your kith and kin was he?”

But Toby made negative gestures. “No, he wasn’t my uncle, if that’s what you’re thinking. But we were on the same vessel, and…”

And if anything Fred Bailey said had a grain of truth in it, shipmates were even closer than kin. Jim stooped for the hammer and leftover nails, and beckoned Toby toward the door. “Come and have a jar. You’ll feel better with
a rum
inside you.” It was close enough to luncheon for his own belly to be hoping for food, and as Toby and the spaniel stepped inside he asked, “You hungry? There’s pie and pudding left from last night.”

“Starving,” Toby admitted as he retrieved the mandolin and set it down again carefully, just inside the door, where it would neither be sat on nor fallen over. “I’ve walked over from Exmouth, and I didn’t get any breakfast! Can Bess have a dish of water?”

The spaniel wagged her tail as she heard her name, and Jim was seduced in an instant. “She can have a dish of ale, if she likes it.”

“She likes it, but she gets drunk.
Water’ll
do,” Toby decided.

“And a slice of rabbit pie,” Jim added.
“And yourself –?”

“Pie sounds grand.” Toby was swinging off his gray coat, and threw it onto a nearby chair. He glanced once around the tavern, and then back at Jim. “You haven’t changed anything.”

“What would I change, and why would I bother?” Jim stepped behind the bar and poured two mugs of brown ale before he went on into the kitchen to rummage for plates, bowls,
spoons
. He raised his voice so Toby would hear as he said, “My father changed nothing after Charlie departed, and the place reminds me of my old dad, so I keep it as it is.”